It is has been appreciated for a long time that sharing game-playing experiences, namely “gameplay experiences”, with people within a social environment can be beneficial, for example as occurs for contemporary spectator sports such as football, cricket and similar. It has similarly also been appreciated that sharing gameplay experiences based on electronic games can also be beneficial for a group of people in mutual communication via an electronic communication network. However, it has been difficult to provide an optimal form of gameplay experience electronically on account of a lack of compatible user software, such that electronic user gameplay experiences have so far been disappointing.
For example, contemporary sharing of gameplay experiences can occur via services provided via the Internet, for example as provided via an service called Twitch offer by Justin.tv Inc located in San Francisco, Calif., USA. Referring to FIG. 1, an example known service offers gamers an opportunity to share their live gameplay via the Internet as one or more web pages 100. A game that is being played is presented on a screen 102 as a form of video presentation. The video presentation beneficially includes a video of a given player 104 whilst he/she is playing the game. The game and the video of the given player 104 are generated at a sending end, for example wherein the sending end is implemented using a personal computer (PC) or lap-top, and wherein the video is captured via a web-camera coupled to the aforesaid PC or lap-top, to a plurality of spectators; when viewed by the plurality of spectators, the game appears on their screens together with an overlaid window including a video image of the given player 104. The service in FIG. 1 is beneficially implemented by way of the given player 104 having a software product installed on his/her PC or lap-top that streams the video of the given player 104 to a server 110 from which the game and the video of the given player 104 are thereafter streamed to the plurality of spectators. Beneficially, the service includes social network components such as a “share” button 112, a “real-time chat” button 108, and so forth. Moreover, the service is also operable to record playing performances of the given player 104, as well as providing comparisons of performance of other users of the service. The service is beneficially funded via advertising, wherein the plurality of spectators are presented various advertisements intermingled with streaming of the given player 104 executing gameplay using the service.
A problem encountered with the service of FIG. 1 is that the plurality of spectators are obliged to view the gameplay experience of the given player 104 as streamed from the server 110. However, for a first sub-set of the spectators, certain portions of the streamed gameplay experience may not be of interest to them, for example the sub-set of spectators are busy people and are merely interested in experiencing performance highlights of the given user 104. Moreover, a second sub-set of the spectators may be desirous to experience the gameplay of the given player 104 in a different format to that which is contemporarily streamed from the server 110. Additionally game sharing can be done only if a player installs special recording software in the computer thus limiting amount of person having capability to share the game experience. Additionally in a solutions where the game sharing is integrated to playback can be done only in a game engine of the same game not as a video.